A bitter herb

Another Masters tournament has come and gone. Inherent in this rite of Spring is a truism. No matter the calendar, the week before finds Winter lingering like a bitter herb, but when The Masters comes, a flood of good feeling washes over every golfer, every fan, every azalea-loving botanist tuning in to watch. The opening tee shot signals Spring has begun.

The week unfolded with the rising and falling of our golf heroes alongside the ebb and flow of birdies and bogeys. Media drenched, the week swelled with stories about our heroes as if we were binge watching a season of Downton Abbey. The Masters and Augusta National allure us into a sense of thinking “we can, too.”

Perhaps embedded in this “we can, too” thought is an unnoticed, unconscious, even subversive dynamic waiting to expose reality— “we can’t.” Never does the reality keep us from thinking beneath consciousness that somehow as golfers if we live through our heroes, we will be better than we are. This leaves us with a question as a person, as a Christian, “With whose narrative do we live our life, our heroes or ourselves or one God calls forth?” As a person, we may believe it not so much to consider. As a Christian, the answer is vital.

The bitter herb that is the answer lingers. Says Otto Rank, “Personality is shaped and formed according to the vital need to please the other person whom we make our ‘God.’” Or should I say god. In a world where it is easy to follow anything and everything, and think nothing of it, Christians must think about it. God wishes nothing exists between Him and His created. But there seems to be comfort in holding onto our god, holding onto what we can see. There is an illusion here making us think we are something we are not, something we believe is tangible but only elusive. This something, we think, shields us from God, from ourself, but only for a time. The world offers shadow gods and shifting shade from the rays of truth. Truth eventually wins.

In a real sense, if we are to do anything about this dilemma, we must move through our mistake and decide to follow the one true God. The way is narrow as Scripture tells us, but the yoke is easy. Because the world offers so much with which we may enthrall ourselves, following God takes real effort, something not so popular but something yielding what Avivah Zornberg calls, “an enlarged life.”

If there is a silver lining, heroes expose us to the possible, something that one day we may transfer from our dreams to our faith in God. When this happens, we are on our way, leaving the old life behind along with our gods and heroes. So leaving, the Christian chances becoming what God calls forth in him, chances allowing others to see Christ in his life, chances living as a “lily of the field.”

Isn’t this the better Spring?